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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394485">in the truth, there's resolution</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaerie/pseuds/jaerie'>jaerie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>and the truth shall set you free... [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Direction (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alpha Louis, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Knotting, Loss of Innocence, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Omega Harry, References to Knotting, Religion, Self-Discovery, Self-Lubrication, sheltered harry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:49:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,629</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394485</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaerie/pseuds/jaerie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Betism: A religion based on the belief that the beta gender has been chosen by God to protect and defend the purity and dignity of the human race by resisting and condemning the lustful ways and flawed biology of the alpha and omega</p>
<p>Harry grew up in a strict and sheltered Betist community.  Louis opens up a whole new world.  Things are much darker than either of them realize.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>and the truth shall set you free... [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839205</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Prompt 3.4: Sin</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in the truth, there's resolution</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It only took 334643654353253435 years!  The Betist sequel is here!  </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge for the prompt "sin". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sin">click here</a>, and to see all fics written as part of the challenge (including years 1-3), <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works">click here</a>. You can also find the masterpost for this year’s challenge <a href="https://wordplayfics.tumblr.com/post/622306139518926848/wordplay-2020-every-week-for-five-weeks-a-prompt">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Satan’s lure and siren’s illusions, satan’s lure and siren’s illusions, satan’s lure and siren’s illusions, satan’s lure and siren’s illusions.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>The line churned in his mind over and over as shaky hands drove Harry back towards Mapleville.  The longer the internal chant went on, the more they melded together into sounds that formed meaningless words.  Because that was all they were, right?  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In all the years of his life he’d never paused to question what a siren even was and yet he’d been one all along.  He’d been one all along and now he’d given in to the ultimate sins of lust.  He’d showered before he’d left and his clothes were fresh from the dryer and he still felt dirty.  It was only days ago that he’d given into temptation and touched himself on his bathroom floor and now an alpha had been inside his body.  The slope had been slippery and steep.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was also late Sunday night and he’d missed church for the first time in his life.  Even bedridden with the flu, his father had scooped him up and taken him to hear The Word.  Youth group had gone on without him.  Devotion had been read by someone else.  It all felt so wrong. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It felt wrong because life had still moved on in his absence.  He’d still moved on.  The fiery pits of hell hadn’t opened up to swallow him.  Lightning hadn’t shot down from the sky.  Mapleville was still standing as it always had been.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even his house with the single porch light was exactly the same.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He kept waiting for something to happen because surely everyone would know, that everyone already knew.  And yet, it didn’t.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The dim light was on in the kitchen and his mother sat at the table with her hands wrapped around her mug of tea that had surely gone cold and the light was on in his father’s study.  Nothing was out of place, nothing was out of the ordinary.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> was.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry was out of place.  He felt like an intruder walking onto the set of a play he was no longer in.  The chairs were still neatly pushed up to the table, faces smiled back at him from the photographs on the wall, the stairs were right where he expected them to be, but all of it felt like stepping back into a memory from another life.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The silence hanging over the house was no longer a comfort to him.  His mother’s blank stare at the patterned wallpaper made goosebumps rise on his arms.  For </span>
  <em>
    <span>one meal</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’d joined Louis’ family and now he couldn’t fit himself back into his own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Louis’ mother had been nurturing and warm, the house full of life.  Harry loved his mother, but she wasn’t any of those things.  Nobody in Mapleville was.  Everyone was rigid and disciplined, modest in every way.  It was the way that God intended.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Harry couldn’t believe that Louis’ family was the root of evil.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>Temptations and illusions.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  Had Harry fallen for their facade?  For their tricks to lure him in?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He made it to his room and immediately pulled out The Word.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>It is only from the alpha or the omega that the cycle of sin continues.  As this is so, it is the alpha’s temptation that lures the beta to its seed.  It is the omega’s illusions that trick the beta to sire.  It is the beta’s curse to perpetuate such evil if they are unable to resist the traps set before them.  The birth of such a tainted child will forever mark the beta that falls.  Rebirth is the sole path to redemption, to disavow all ties to the sins of the past.  </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry read the passage with new eyes, taking in the words again and again until he could not escape the meaning behind them.  He was born of sin.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>He</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the sin.  That didn’t make any sense.  His father was a pastor of the Betist church, not an alpha, so that only meant… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry shook his head and pushed his chair back from his desk.  No.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>No.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  It didn’t make any sense.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was he adopted?  Had he been disavowed by his birth parents as they were reborn?  Taken in by the charity of an aspiring pastor?  Did his parents know what he was?  Would they cast him out if they knew the truth?  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hands shook as he slammed the book closed and pushed it off his desk with an angry swipe.  It fell to the floor with the covers wide, the pages crushed beneath its weight in a mess of crinkles.  The sight of the desecrated book made his anxiety spike on instinct until he realized he didn’t care.  For once in his life he didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to care.  He stomped his foot down on the spine that creased open at an awkward angle, each crackling sound giving him a greater sense of satisfaction.  If this was evil, then he liked it.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d based his entire existence over hating something that he was.  He was raised with the value of the truth and The Word while being lied to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But what was his life without the guidance of The Word?  Of God?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shoved the book under his bed as his fear rose the longer he looked at it.  If he had been adopted into the church, then he had been given the gift of conversion, and over one weekend, he’d thrown it all away.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He began to recite the prayers for forgiveness, each syllable feeling foreign on his tongue.  They, too, were things from a former life, pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit into place.  They didn’t bring him the peace they once had.  They didn’t settle his soul.  Did that mean he had fooled himself into thinking they ever had?  Or had he handed himself over to the devil so they never would again?  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Believing had never been a question and now everything had turned into one. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Exhaustion was still heavy in his mind and in his body even though he’d slept before making the drive home.  Not even bothering with pajamas, he slipped beneath the covers on his bed and melted into the mattress.  Just as he thought he’d calmed down enough to drift off, a new memory popped up in his mind.  A touch.  A word whispered into his ear.  The things that had come from his own mouth.  The things he’d begged Louis to do.   </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They played like little movie clips in the darkness, unable to stop the reel.  He groaned as he was reminded, embarrassed by what had happened.  He’d never be able to face Louis again.  And then on a deeper level, shame consumed him with how much he had liked every minute of it.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually he was able to drift off into a fitful sleep that brought no rest.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the sun began to rise, it was like any other morning.  Shower, brush teeth, tame hair.  Dress, prayer, school.  He did it all on autopilot with the ghost of a crushed book beneath his bed and secrets looming overhead.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He plastered on a smile when he saw Sarah had saved him a seat.  He’d forgotten about her.  He’d been dragging her down with him and his unknown sins of just existing.  It was never going to work between them.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Taking a seat at her side, he offered a small smile.  She didn’t notice anything different than any other day.  Neither did anyone else.  He was asked to read as he always was, was asked to lead the prayer.  The whole time he looked at the faces around him and wondered how they didn’t know, how they couldn’t tell there was a heathen in their midst.  Siren’s illusions indeed.  He’d deceived them all.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Only the day before he’d been begging for Louis’ knot, presenting himself for the alpha to enter his body and enjoyed it.  Lust had consumed him and he’d given in.  His body had leaked for it.  Today, he sat quietly like his Betist peers, like it had never happened.  A mark hadn’t appeared on his forehead and God hadn’t announced it from above.  They didn’t know.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Had God forgiven him or were the teachings just scare tactics?  He had no way to know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He went through his day, went through the motions.  Nothing changed, no one noticed.  The only difference was the state of his mind and the things he could never forget that he’d done.  He’d always been on autopilot, he realized.  That was why everything was exactly the same.  Parroted lines and thoughts.  All his actions as they were expected to be.  He’d never had his own thoughts.  Maybe he was never supposed to.  Maybe that was his first sin.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After school he climbed into the driver’s seat of the van and made the drive to B.A.Y.  The passing scenery slowly dulled his senses until he was a blank slate by the time he pulled into the parking lot.  Routine.  His routine would save him.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Harry! Hey!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was Louis.  Harry stared through him as he approached, letting his eyes blur his figure.  The alpha’s scent was on the breeze and the feeling it induced made Harry feel vulnerable.  He held his breath and then only breathed through his mouth.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, are you okay?  It’s weird you don’t have a phone so I couldn’t call to make sure.”  Maybe if Harry just ignored everything, it would go away.  He could go back to normal.  “Harry?  Are you angry with me?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry wasn’t angry with him.  Or maybe he was.  He was angry with himself for letting any of it happen, for not knowing what he was.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Harry, what did they do to you?” Louis’ hands were warm as they took his.  “Did they hurt you?  I’ll take you straight to the police right now and you never have to go back there if they did.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry shifted his eyes and they focused on Louis’ worried face, on his eyes.  There was so much emotion there that he had never seen.  He didn’t know what it meant.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s a siren?” he asked, still feeling blank, still carefully breathing through his mouth.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Louis looked at him, confused. “A siren?  Like a police siren?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Satan’s lure and siren’s illusions,” he recited in the perfect chant he’d always been taught.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like a sea creature thing like a mermaid?” Louis started to explain, “That sing songs and lure sailors into the water to drown or something like that.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There aren’t any mermaids in The Word,” Harry said in an even voice.  The only mermaid he’d ever seen was a cartoon and she hadn’t been evil.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, there probably aren’t any mermaids,” Louis agreed, his hands still warm where they held Harry’s.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t want to be a siren,” Harry said, “I want to be what I’ve always been.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You already are what you’ve always been.  You’re not a siren.  That is a bunch of bullshit they tell you so you’re scared of the world just like I’m not satan or trying to hurt you.  I’ll admit that I did lose my self control this weekend and I’m really really sorry, but I didn’t do it because I wanted to cause you any harm.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what to do,” Harry finally whispered with a quiver to his voice as his eyes welled up with helpless tears.  He was like a ping pong ball being hit back and forth until he didn’t know what direction was the correct one to follow.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Louis gathered him up in his arms and Harry finally let himself pull in a full breath through his nose.  Louis’ scent filled his senses and it immediately had a calming effect.  The sudden rush made him sob against Louis’ shoulder as everything let loose.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re going to go talk first and then we’re going to figure it out,” Louis murmured softly against his ear.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They were in the back of Harry’s van again.  So they could talk in private, Louis had said.  Harry had easily agreed given his red eyes and tear stained cheeks.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So what did your parents say?” Louis asked when they were comfortable on the bench seat.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They didn’t say anything,” Harry sniffed.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They had no response?” Louis’ face morphed into irritated confusion.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry shrugged.  “I didn’t say anything to them.  They didn’t say anything to me.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do they not know you’re an omega either?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry felt helpless.  He didn’t have any answers.  “I don’t know if they do.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay so first you’re going to go home and ask them why they kept this a secret.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Anxious fear immediately wrapped around him, his eyes wide.  “I can’t do that!  I’m a sin!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> a sin, Harry. You can’t choose the way you’re born, not like this.  I’ve been reading your books and it doesn’t make </span>
  <em>
    <span>sense</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Maybe it’s easy to think it does in a closed community like Mapleville, but it doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t work.  Your religion was started by a beta who thought he was in love with a mated omega.  Her alpha beat the crap out of him when he caught him stalking her and he was thrown in jail where he wrote The Word.  Your entire religion was created by a jealous stalker.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not true,” Harry whispered in shock, “That’s not how it happened.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course Harry had heard a version of that story.  It was part of their history that was always told with the utmost respect.  But that’s not how Harry knew it.  The beta had been in love with another beta that the alpha wanted.  The alpha nearly killed him and his beta love had been transformed into an omega by the powers of evil while he was held against his will.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That is how it happened, Harry.  It happened in recent history.  Recent enough that there are portraits of them.  It’s well documented history.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Harry shook his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Betism is a selfish religion that condemns two thirds of the world’s population.  Me and you are both part of that.  You’re in a religion that is telling you to hate yourself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry’s tears had started to run down his cheeks again silently, the roof of his mouth aching from holding them all back with no success.  He didn’t want his life to be a lie.  He didn’t want any of what Louis’ was saying to be true.  Just days ago Harry had been on a path to become a pastor, one of the highest positions in the church, one of the most sincere believers.  All his stability was being shattered.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Louis sighed and rubbed his eyes in frustration.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I won’t tell you what to do.  But being an omega isn’t going to just go away if you ignore it.  You’re going to have heats whether an alpha is around or not and you aren’t going to be able to hide it.  People are going to know.  Your </span>
  <em>
    <span>parents</span>
  </em>
  <span> are going to know.  And then what’s going to happen?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Harry burst into full tears.  He didn’t know what was going to happen.  It felt like his life was over and then the next minute he felt like maybe it would be okay, that everything could just continue like it always had. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Louis held him close until he had calmed down, rubbing his back and letting Harry’s nose rest against his neck to breathe in his gentle scent.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want you to go home and talk to your parents.  Talk to them and if anything happens, I want you to call me or I want you to come to my house.  I’ll write down all my information, okay?  We’ll figure everything out.”  </span>
</p>
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